You see these things in a pansy, and a great deal more--station in life, religious convictions almost--but try to focus your impression, try to analyze the blooming countenance that looks up into yours, and the result is fugitive and annoying. Not a feature will bear inspection; instantly they vanish, magically, as if ashamed of the likeness you look for, and leave you contemplating just a flower, with petals. You have noticed that in a pansy. It is better, if you wish to enjoy yourself among them, to take them with a light and passing regard, and privately add them to the agreeable things of life that will not bear looking into. I here asked Thalia if she thought they did better from seeds or from roots, and she said she didn’t know. One often hears the German language complimented on its pretty name for pansies, _Stiefmütterchen_, but it is very indiscriminating. They are by no means all little stepmothers; some of them wear beards and I wish they wouldn’t, for a beard is a loathly thing in nature or on men. Also the personation that goes on among them is really reprehensible; one can find pansy photographs of any number of people. One irascible and impossible old retired colonel in England is always appearing, to my great satisfaction and delight. The original would be so vastly annoyed to know how often he comes out to see me here, and how amiable and interesting I find him, for we are not good friends, and I am sure he would not dream of calling in the flesh. It is an old story among us, but I was surprised to find Atma, too, impressed with this likeness to the human family. I asked him the other day why some pansies were so big and others so little. He considered for a moment and then he said with the smiling benevolence which we extend to the intelligence of the young, “Like people they come--some are born to be large and some to be small. As Sropo and Masuddi.” Atma is really the interpreter of this garden. Thalia again interrupted me to ask why it was not possible this season, when purple was so popular, to find in the shops anything as royal as the colour a certain pansy was wearing. I said the reason was probably lost in science, but she immediately supplied it herself, as I have noticed my sex is prone to do in searching for general explanations. “Of course,” she said, “one must remember that they grow their own clothes. If we could only do that! The repose of being quite certain that nobody else had your pattern!” “They would take too long,” I objected. “This poor thing has spent three-quarters of her life making her frock, and now she can only wear it for about three days.” But Thalia seemed pleased with the idea. “Think how original I could make my gowns in _Lady Thermidore_,” she said pensively. “And you would perish with your design!” I exclaimed. “No,” she cried luminously, “I should reappear in another character!”